A wee bit of research

These photographs were taken at the beginning of 2009. They're of me and they were the first project I did when I went back to a new class at Design and Arts College (D&A) after having to take a year off. Needless to say, showing these photos was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and that's definitely saying something because I've had to go through a LOT of hard things. I was so so nervous when I was doing my critique in front of 14 people I had only known for about 6 weeks.

 The images I displayed were put together in a David Hockney inspired way and had questions like "You don't think I have to put up with enough, without you starting too?", statements such as "Take your time staring at me while I can't see you" and words like "cancer", "leukaemia" and "different". I wanted the people viewing them to be awake of what it was they were doing and aware of how the person they're staring at would feel if they were doing it in person. At this time of my treatment, I was constantly aware of the elongated looks I would get from passersby (which as my Dad said to me, was fair enough because I didn't look normal, and they had to take their time deciding what was wrong with me etc), but it drove me mental. I would come home from the mall in the foulest mood, angry at everyone but also really hurt. I had to put up with so much crap with my treatment, and I couldn't even go out to the mall to try and get some normality back.

I felt amazing after I had displayed these though. I got some really great feedback and some of my classmates reported back to me the intense emotion they saw on people faces as they were standing, looking at them. One of my lovely classmates, Andrea said she thought I was incredibly brave (my Mum had said that too, but she's suppose to say things like that so hearing it from Andrea was awesome).

Abbey Proctor, 2009, A.L.L Me (3 of a series of 5) [digital photographic collage]

This assignment and time of my life was when my slight obsession with identity came into being, so I decided to drag the photographs out from the archives and use them in a wee project this year for my BFA study's. I printed four of the original photographs off on the Xerox at A3 size and accompanied them with a wee note asking "What is this person's story? Please feel free to write your theories and ideas on the photographs." I stuck them on the wall at D&A in the hope that the First-Third year photographers and fine artists would jump at the chance to interact with some artwork. I was mistaken. I went in a week after I put them on the wall and there were three ideas on them. I was slightly heartbroken to say the least, but my tutors came to the rescue and got their students to write on them. Bless.

So after the photographs being up for three weeks, this is what was on them. I was so excited when I picked them up from D&A yesterday morning.

Now finally, what this post is actually about: 

As one of the side projects I'm working on for my BFA at the moment, I'm going to pair the words that were so kindly written on the images, with a portrait of me now. I'm going to try and get the same lighting, facial expression and composition as the photo above. I'm undecided how exactly I will display the words, but at the moment I'm thinking I might set it out like a caption either below the image on the same page or displayed and framed separately to the photograph in the way of French photographer Sophie Calle. I want to create a confusion between the physical identity and the.. personality, I guess you could call it.. that is listed along side the portrait. I'm hoping it will turn out really interesting..

End of year exhibition

This is my wee press release for our end of year exhibition. We had to do one each for an assignment as part of our Arts and Marketing workshop we had up in Auckland last week. I'll tweak it when we know for definite where are it is going to be held, and what the name is. But for how, this is it..

Self

A good few months ago now, I was looking in the Technical Bookshop in Riccarton on Clarence Street by the mall. I went in looking for some of those 1960's Vogue mags (completely the wrong place for that kind of thing) but I did find a book on identity and the self which I thought was quite interesting. It's called 'The Ego Trick - What does it mean to be you?' by Julian Baggini. It sort of sounds like a terrible self help book but it's really not. Baggini is founding editor of Philosopher's Magazine (personally, I've never heard of it but it sounds pretty interesting) and in the book talks to theologians, priests and lamas as well as neurologists and psychologists to get different takes on what the self is. I'm almost half way through reading it and I'm loving it. It is so interesting!

Anyway. Through reading this I've had lots of different ideas that kind of illustrate some of the ideas said in the book, but are also kind of metaphorical. One particular paragraph really stood out to me:

"So what could explain the strange combination of fragility and robustness that characterises the self?

The answer is perhaps that the fragility is the strength. A pearl may be hard and distinct, but smash it and it's utterly destroyed. A composite or amalgam, on the other hand, is of it's nature a collection of things. That means items can come and go, or be damaged, without necessarily terminally destroying the character of the whole."

That is quite possibly one of my favourite paragraphs I have ever read. How he has worded it is so beautiful.

With this idea in mind, I broke things. I smashed a few plates and a couple of vases; things that are both fragile but strong at the same time. We know that if a plate or vase is dropped, it will smash, however when they are doing what they're suppose to do, they're strong. After completely ruining and breaking the structure of these things, I put the pieces back together, but some pieces were missing or ended up being slightly mismatched, however the original structure and purpose of the items is still able to be seen. They are broken entities, but are still able to function as their original selves.

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Fragile robustness I [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Fragile robustness II [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Fragile robustness III [digital photograph]

More collage

These collages have been put together using images from a book filled with 10 years of Harper's Bazaar photographs. When I started playing around with these photographs, it seemed like my work should be heading towards an appropriation/found photographs road and for some reason I wanted to use fashion photographs. Originally I went hunting for old 1960's Vogue magazines but was not successful. These images explore the same idea as my earlier collages; the act of identifying an individual is similar to that of piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. However after working with these collages for a few weeks, I realised they were starting to become a critique of the media and were going down a feminist road due to almost all of the photographs being of women. I didn't want that so I decided to reevaluate and redirect my work away from collage, although I do think a lot of the images worked really well and said what it was I wanted them to say..

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Triangle [collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Shift [collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Blue dots [collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Double face [collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Mismatched [collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Facial shift [collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Triangle and dots [collage]

Cameos

These two images are the only ones in this series. They were a wee experiment/play with the idea of the cameo or relief. Again, the facial features have been removed to allow the viewer to use their imagination to form an identification of the subject, and the jewellery has also been emphasized to add to the information presented to the viewer. As I said, these came into being when I was playing with some images on my computer, so the concept behind them isn't very defined, but I really like the aesthetic..

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Cameos [digital photographs]

Colour Cutouts

This series consists of 4 images, each of a different person and each with the same aesthetic idea; the face blocked in with a colour pulled from the subjects clothing. The photographs explore the importance of the physical identity of a person and how that is expressed by way of clothing, accessories and colour. Since the facial features have been totally filled in, the emphasis is placed onto the clothing somewhat contradicting the idea I'm addressing about not judging a book by it's cover, but I quite like the aesthetic of this series.

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled smokey blue [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled red [digital photograph]

Shadow-isms

This is only a small series, consisting of 5 images. When photographing some of my subjects I had them 'be themselves' by way of their mannerisms. I got them to do things that we recognised as their "isms"; something I think is just as important when identifying an individual as taking note of personal appearance. The portraits are blacked out to have minimal detail in which the viewer is left to really use his or hers imagination when trying to make an identification.

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Shadow #2 [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Shadow #3 [digital photograph]

Experimental collages

These are some of the first collage-like images I did, inspired by some photographs I found online by an artist called Letha Wilson and the mass amounts of tiny strips of paper I was cutting out when putting together my visual diary.. I started by weaving the paper into the photographs in specific ways to block out some of the main facial features, and went from there. The images address the idea of identifying and the way that this act is similar to the act of piecing together a jigsaw puzzle; within the images are segments and snippets of the subject that the viewer naturally tries to make sense of.

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Roll [photographic collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, White [photographic collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Strips [photographic collage]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Negative strips  [photographic collage]

First Whitecliffe assignment

Slightly out of order but.. These photographs are from the first assignment we had at Whitecliffe way back in February. The Christchurch and Rotorua students had to go up to Auckland for a week for orientation. While we were up there, we had that week to do a small body of work where the concept had the potential to span the length of the year. The items featured in the photographs belong to my classmates. They're objects they had with them at the time, that they thought would say the most about themselves. One of the things the tutors had said at the beginning of the week was to push ourselves out of out comfort-zone, as it were, hence the marks on the surface the objects are sitting on. I'm quite a perfectionist when it comes to that sort of thing and at first I was not happy about it. Now I think it adds something to the images. They were taken the week of the massive February 22nd Earthquake in Christchurch, and I just didn't have the time to edit them...

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Portraits without a face (series) [digital photographs]

Cutouts

Towards the middle of the year (which meant mid-year critique), my work started to go down a more abstract road and these were the first of the cutouts. I found these quite fun due to the fact that there is very little information about the subjects present in the photographs. The viewer's imagination really needs to get thinking. I do think I had more fun and liked these more because of the aesthetic, rather than what they said as a series though..

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled pink cutout #1 [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled pink cutout #2 [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled pink cutout #3 [digital photograph]

Pink

Again, these are just two from a series. This effect actually came into being through a mistake by me in Photoshop. I was meaning to fill the face in with black to make a silhouette, however the brush was set to a pink, skin-toned colour.. and voila! I was really happy with these. I quite like how you get a glimpse at the subjects facial features, but not quite enough to know what exactly they look like..

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled pink #6 [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled pink #7 [digital photograph]

Silhouettes

These are the first couple of images I did from a whole series of silhouette portraits; the series was of different people of different shapes and sizes. The side on profile shot was inspired by some paintings I saw by artists MacDermott and MacGough. I think the profile is an interesting perspective. A perfect side on view isn't something you generally see of a person...

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled silhouette #1 [digital photograph]

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Untitled silhouette #2 [digital photograph]